Tambourine Man – do you Like Your T-shirt Art Funked up?

by Steve PhillibenDecember 02, 2016

Angels & Astronauts; our sixth collection since Colour Is Sound began in December 2015 is possibly our best in terms of stunning original T-shirt art, high impact conceptual designs which tell a story, celebrating seminal music, and look the bomb! Shoulder to shoulder works of beauty, drawing inspiration (pun intended) from The Byrds, Prince and P-Funk, three visionaries acts that set off from Terra-Firma Via Galactica on the road to godlike genius.

Imagine being so prolific, yet visionary driven, to have the courage to abandon not one but three albums as Prince did between 1986 and 87, consigning Dream Factory, Camille and Crystal Ball to the fragments of his mind as he embarked upon the ground-breaking opus which is Sign o' the Times.

Sign o' the Times is daring pop sorcery, playing with a multitude of possibilities of what a song can be, where it can be set. At times, it is sparse, just a hard pulse, mutated electronics and orgasmic scream, but is always relentlessly moving through an astonishing array of hooks that makes your nervous system whirl in dizziness. It can seduce with extravagant simplicity. Melodies and harmonies slip unexpectedly into how do you go there and get back, rhythmically chasing, dovetailing and looping each other. None of the sixteen songs is like any of the others; or derivative of anything but Prince universe. It is about identity, desire, devotion, pleasure, dancing, playing and how great sex is.

Prince’s singing inhabits so many styles it’s unbelievable. Seduction spills from his mouth as easily as desperation or that coo, another vox signature as compelling as his Gospel pleas that share the groves within the lacquer alongside his whimsical, comedy and just down righty filthy voices. To reinvent the voice in music is to reinvent the character, the identity, the song within the song; and therein lies the essence of Prince’s off planet talent and timelessness. The man is a mirror door to the quantum nature of our reality.

Prince was as good a Producer as Brian Wilson and as good a guitar player as Jimi Hendrix, he could play just about anything and play it like a master. Prince took the P-Funk spaceship and set the co-ordinates for Paisley Park where he built his own musicverse and boy did he fly.